Good life is Marx's social ideal. In his works such as Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and Comments on James Mill, Éléments D'économie Politique, Marx especially emphasizes man's !free, conscious activity (freie bewußte Tätigkeit)!, emphasizes individual as a total being (i.e. "a totality of human manifestation of life (Totalität menschlicher Lebensäußerung)"), as a rich man, which means man's senses, needs, talents being richness (Reichtum), and at the same time Marx criticizes the alienation of sense (i.e. the sense of having), the alienation of need (i.e. false need), criticizes man's reification (i.e. man being not as ends but only as means), and money fetishism. Similarly, in the German Ideology Marx emphasizes the personal individual (persönlichem Individuum"and spontaneous activity (Selbstbetätigung). Marx also describe the good life idyllically as follows: "in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic." Here the agent is an active subject, but not a hermit. It means that each individual could develops his (her) potentiality(Potenz) , aptitude (Anlage) and talents(Talente) freely and all-round(" task of every person is to achieve all-round development of all his abilities"), so becomes self-actualization. This is Marx's image of good life.

Theorists in the period of the Second International mostly regarded Marx's theories as an empirical science but refused to admit the existence of "Marx's philosophy." Marx himself also held the idea of "abolishing philosophy" and in The German Ideology, he even drew an analogy comparing the relationship between philosophy and empirical science and that between masturbation and actual sexual love. Since Plekhanov, and particularly since Lenin, Dialectical Materialism has been considered to be synonymous with Marx's philosophy. Early Marxists from Lukacs and Gramsci to Korsch were all against the trend that theorists of the Second International consigning Marx's theories to empirical science, but, at the same time, they also objected to systemizing Marx's philosophy in terms of Dialectical Materialism (they even traced the origin of this approach back to Engels), and, as the result, they created a new interpretive approach to Marx's "praxis philosophy." After the 20 th century, its existence or non-existence not having been a big problem for "Marx's philosophy," Western scholars still scarcely introduced Marx when it came to compiling of the histories of philosophy. Nonetheless, the situation has changed recently. For instance, both Samuel Stumpf's textbook Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy (2007) and Douglas J. Soccio's Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (2010) introduce Marx as an important philosopher, the latter even set aside a chapter for Marx's philosophy. Of course, these works fail to understand Marx's philosophy in the true sense of going beyond dialectic materialism and historical materialism. It merits mentioning though that, not long after the Cold War, Etienne Balibar in The Philosophy of Marx (1993) and Tom Rockmore in Marx after Marxism: The Philosophy of Karl Marx (2002) both coincided in being committed to rebuilding "Marx's philosophy."

BACKGROUND: The mechanisms underlying neointima formation remain unclear. Interferon regulatory factors (IRFs), which are key innate immune regulators, play important roles in cardiometabolic diseases. However, the function of IRF4 in arterial restenosis is unknown. METHODS: IRF4 expression was first detected in human and mouse restenotic arteries. Then, the effects of IRF4 on neointima formation were evaluated with universal IRF4-deficient mouse and rat carotid artery injury models. We performed immunostaining to identify IRF4-expressing cells in the lesions. Smooth muscle cell (SMC)-specific IRF4-knockout (KO) and-transgenic (TG) mice were generated to evaluate the effects of SMC-IRF4 on neointima formation. We used microarray, bioinformatics analysis, and chromatin immunoprecipitation assay to identify the downstream signals of IRF4 and to verify the targets in vitro. We compared SMC-IRF4-KO/Krüppellike factor 4 (KLF4)-TG mice with SMC-IRF4-KO mice and SMC-specific IRF4-TG/KLF4-KO mice with SMC-specific IRF4-TG mice to investigate whether the effect of IRF4 on neointima formation is KLF4-dependent. The effect of IRF4 on SMC phenotype switching was also evaluated. RESULTS: IRF4 expression in both the human and mouse restenotic arteries is eventually downregulated. Universal IRF4 ablation potentiates neointima formation in both mice and rats. Immunostaining indicated that IRF4 was expressed primarily in SMCs in restenotic arteries. After injury, SMC-IRF4-KO mice developed a thicker neointima than control mice. This change was accompanied by increased SMC proliferation and migration. However, SMCspecific IRF4-TG mice exhibited the opposite phenotype, demonstrating that IRF4 exerts protective effects against neointima formation. The mechanistic study indicated that IRF4 promotes KLF4 expression by directly binding to its promoter. Genetic overexpression of KLF4 in SMCs largely reversed the neointima-promoting effect of IRF4 ablation, whereas ablation of KLF4 abolished the protective function of IRF4, indicating that the protective effects of IRF4 against neointima formation are KLF4-dependent. In addition, IRF4 promoted SMC dedifferentiation. CONCLUSIONS: IRF4 protects arteries against neointima formation by promoting the expression of KLF4 by directly binding to its promoter. Our findings suggest that this previously undiscovered IRF4-KLF4 axis plays a key role in vasculoproliferative pathology and may be a promising therapeutic target for the treatment of arterial restenosis.

All kind of human society has to solve two issues: survival problem and ecological problem. The solution of survival problem has two aspects: 1, how to acquire necessary materials (from nature), to free of hungry and poverty; 2, how to distribute the material, to purchase equality and justice. The former refers to social productivity; the latter refers to social institution. In the long history when human only has weak ability to acquire materials from nature, the solution of survival problem focused on searching a better social institution, to reform, or to revolute. Making use of science and scientific technology, human have the power to acquire more and more materials from nature, after human came into industrial civilization. Human found a new way to treat survival problem, even if the distribution institution was not fair, every parts might have more materials than before. Survival problem seems to be solved, but ecological problem came unexpectedly. The ecological problem is the problem of the relationship between human and nature, manifesting as environmental pollution and ecological collapse. The industrial civilization shows an illusion that the advancement of science and technology has no limitation, and the materials human can take from nature have no limitation too. Therefore, a view of one-direction social development was accepted as mainstream ideology. Under the social structure of industrial civilization, 1, in fact, the equality and justice issues was not solved, but neglected, or pushed to future; 2, in modern societies, theoretically, human has equal human right, including the equal right to exploit nature; 3, while, such equality is only an ideal, the modernization is a food chain-the upstream parts exploit the down stream parts, and both of them exploit natural; but generally, the upstream exploit natural indirectly by exploiting the downstream, which happens between the different levels of one country, and happens more often among different countries in the time of globalization; therefore, the ecological problems are transferred to the downstream; 4, the worsen of ecological problem at downstream finally results the global ecological crisis, so the survival problem in the downstream countries are more severe; and all human beings face the survival crisis because of the collapse of global ecology in the coming future. Under the social structure of industrial civilization, science and its technology

Kant’s critical theory on moral feeling can be divided into two stages: early and late. In the early stage, Kant was committed to accepting and transforming the traditional concept of moral feeling, while in the later stage he turned to developing his own unique theory on the topic. His beliefs about moral feeling changed between these two stages, both regarding the basic meaning of moral feeling (from intuitive empirical feelings to a priori feelings based on rationality) and the function of moral feeling in moral philosophy (from the basis of moral law to the motivation of moral action). This paper argues that these shifts help clarify the framework of Kant’s moral philosophy and introduce a new dimension to Kant’s definition of feelings and the relationship between sensibility and intellectuality. Namely, sensibility is not only determined by intellectuality but also has its unique initiative. Through acting on the body, intellectuality generates intellectual feelings, which in t...

Kant uses the concept of the symbol to show the complicated relationship between the autonomy of beauty and its systematic function as a transition from nature to freedom, which are the two most important topics in the third Critique. Beauty’s symbolism of morality lies in the analogue between aesthetic reflection and moral disposition; concretely, it lies in the purity or disinterestedness and self-legislation as negative and positive freedom in both subjective states of mind. In this scenario, beauty’s symbolism does not refer to aesthetic ideas that either involve intelligent interests (in the beauty of nature) or presuppose an end (in the beauty of art); it also cannot be grounded in the supersensible substrate, which is an elevated and metaphysical principle of the judgment of taste given in the Dialectic but not the original principle of subjective purposiveness in the Analytic. With this formal relationship, beauty and morality accelerate each other in the empirical-anthological sense—but they are also not a sufficient or necessary condition for each other. Furthermore, through symbolism, taste looks toward the intelligible and serves as a transition from nature to freedom from the transcendental perspective.

There are various dichotomies in Kant’s philosophy: sensibility vs. rationality, nature vs. freedom, cognition vs. morality, noumenon vs. phenomenon, among others. There are also different ways of mediating these dichotomies, which is the systematic undertaking of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. One of the most important concepts in this work is the sublime, which exemplifies the connections between the different dichotomies; this fact means the concept’s construction is full of tension. On the one hand, as a pure reflection of aesthetic judgment the sublime must be without interest or purpose, but on the other hand it is “based on the concept of reason” (KU AA:292). On the one hand, the sublime “represents merely the subjective play of the powers of the mind (imagination and reason) as harmonious” (KU AA5:258), but on the other hand, reason “exercises dominion over sensibility” and the imagination is “purposively determined in accordance with a law” of reason (KU AA5:268f). Taking into account these problems concerning the essential definition the sublime, this paper will first illustrate how the sublime embodies the a priori principle of aesthetic judgment through contrasting the judgment of the sublime with the judgment of taste in order to establish a basic logical frame for the judgment of the sublime. Second, this paper redefines the boundary between the mathematically and dynamically sublime in order to reveal both the coexistence of contemplation and movement within the sublime and the unrevealed function of reason and imagination. Finally, contrasting the sublime with moral feeling, this paper elaborates the turning-structure (from sensibility to rationality and from object-intuition to idea-exhibition) of the sublime.

The first treatise on the Aristotelian Ethics in the Chinese language can be traced back to “XiushenXixue”(修身西学: Western Learning on Personal Cultivation) in the late Ming, a work from Alfonso Vagnone S．J., albeit exchanges between Aristotelian ethics and Confucian ethics may have happened in other forms before this．
Unfortunately, this work has not been given due attention in modern theological and secular academic circles,and thus it sunk into oblivion．This article is an attempt to do justice to his endeavor of making Aristotelian ethics known to Chinese at that time．There are two issues in this paper: the first one is concerned with the sources of “XiushenXixue”, and the second one deals with his Christianized interpretation of Aristotelian ethical principles．I will approach the second issue
mainly by examining the two fundamental ethical concepts, happiness(εὐδαιμονία)and virtue (ἀρετή),and examining how Vagnone adapted Aristotelian ethics to Chinese culture．At a minimum, we can say that it is meaningless to argue if XSXX is just a mixture or hodgepodge of different ethical traditions adapted to the Chinese context,because the meaning and value of XSXX as the first treatise on Aristotelian ethics in the history of Western Learning spreading to East already goes far beyond that question．

The western psychology or Aristotle's De anima in China could be traced back to Lingyan lishao (靈言蠡勺, Short Treatise on Matters Pertaining to the Soul), written by the Italian Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi in 1624 in China. The aim of this paper is trying to figure out the most important characteristics of Lingyan lishao by analyzing some fundamental metaphysical concepts which Sambiasi used to describe the soul and shed light on the question of how Sambiasi used Aristotelian hylomorphic framework and Coimbra commentaries to rewrite the western psychology in Chinese. The first part provides a brief introduction of the sources which Sambiasi used in his Lingyan lishao. The second part considers the immortality and the essence of the soul while the capacities or faculties of the soul will be treated in the third part. Finally, in the fourth part the transcendental goal of the soul will be discussed.

John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz, 24 June 1542-14 December 1591) is, doubtless, one of the most important mystical figures in the church history. In the soul's ascent to the Mount Carmelthe place of Godor in the process of becoming union with God, the soul will undergo a journey of "dark night" both psychologically (of the spirit) and physiologically (of the sense). The thesis focuses on finding the meaning of the "dark night" in his mystic theology through analyzing both its active and its passive sense. According to him, the "dark night" is not meant for the absence of the light or the hopeless emptiness, but it is the necessary experience of the soul because of the God's completely otherness and His transcendence. Through the outpouring of the love into the soul by God, the "dark night" wins its constructive meaning in the process of divine union with God. Iin order to become union with God or the ultimate wholeness, man has to detatch himself from every attachment to both the worldly things and spiritual goodness, and spring into the dark night. So the thesis will try to show how this "dark night" actually a medium or a place, where God communicates himself with our souls. At the end, it will be shown that the ascent of the soul to God happens not in the platonic dualistic way, but belongs to the mystery of personal love of God.

The Unmoved Mover" (τὸ κινοῦν άκίνητον) or the "First Mover" in the philosophy of Aristotle was thought as God in the Scholasticism in the Middle Age, especially in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. However, the modern scholars have developed different and even controversial views on this interpretation. Based on the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, some scholars reinterpret the so-called identification thesis of the "First Mover" with God, while some others argue against this thesis. The goal of this paper does not lie only in figuring out the structure of the controversy, but it tries to analyze the arguments and the reasons, on which both establish their own views, and to provide my own understanding of the issue concerning the relation between the "First Mover" and God by pointing out their contributions and limits.

ABSTRACT: This article intends to discover the function of phantasia for phronesis.
Its main idea is that the practically wise person has the right sort of phantasia associated with the right kind of pleasure and pain and that through the medium of pleasure and pain phronesis and phantasia become connected. First, I examine what Aristotle means when he says that phronesis is a special kind of practical perception which is concerned with ethical particulars. Second, I illustrate the function of phantasia, especially deliberative phantasia, for the ethical agent based on the essential proposition that phantasia has a motivational force based on its representation of things as objects of desire. The virtuous man has the right kind of practical phantasia and phantasmata in the sense that things appear to him as good or pleasurable in the way they are really so. Finally, I argue that natural phantasia and phantasmata which we possess from birth need to be transformed by the practical intellect so that they might acquire moral values; and the pleasure which the virtuous man takes in doing good actions consolidates his virtuous characters so that he can act out of a settled and steadfast dispositions.

This article undertakes a reexamination of shamanism in early China, an issue that centers on a religious title (wu) that is consistently mentioned in virtually every major text from the period. For roughly the last fifty years, sinologists have vigorously argued the appropriateness of identifying these wu as shamans. In an effort to bring a deeper degree of clarity to this issue, Parts 1 and 2 of the article explore certain findings from the field of modern shaman studies that can open up new ways of thinking about the wu. Part 3 examines the ways in which sinologists have approached the wu and attempts to show how modern shaman theory can allow us to better situate our thinking on this issue. Part 4 offers a brief case study of one early Chinese text and considers how modern shaman theory can shed new light on our interpretation of the wu.

Mountains hold an important place in the religious imagination of humankind. They reach up into the heavens, and ascending them brings one closer to the celestial deities whose presence is usually more desired than the infernal deities, even though Mircea Eliade writes that mountains, representative of the axis mundi, have their roots in the underworld. 1 He specifies mountains as privileged places for experiencing the sacred, either as "hierophanies" (manifestations of the sacred) or "kratophanies" (manifestations of power). 2

This article presents an analysis of certain erotic strategies employed by shamans of the early Chinese state of Chu that were intended to attract and seduce an array of spirits thought to inhabit the world of nature. These strategies are analyzed from a collection of songs gathered together under the title of the Jiu ge from the Chuci anthology, and they provide some of the clearest evidences for a tradition of early Chinese southern Chu shamanism. After setting forth certain elements of the religious, historical, and theoretical background of this shamanism, this article approaches and analyzes it in terms of the eroticized gender relations between humans and spirits upon which this shamanism is centrally based. Because the present author understands shamanism in terms of face to face communication between human beings and bodiless beings in a séance event, and because these communications are represented as taking place by way of either the shaman journeying to the spirit or the spirit coming to take possession of the shaman, the final sections of this article analyze each type of séance event separately.